Tiptup said:lordjedi said:You didn't say a "standalone copy." You said it's only available by "digital download" and Nanner was merely correcting that specific statement of yours. (Also, I highly doubt he was trying to make any "point" about our discussion, so I think your last post was barking up the wrong tree there.)
Otherwise, the rest of what you said about StarCraft shows that you know nothing about the game (which you should if you're going to keep acting like you're an expert on every subject in the world). StarCraft is not StarCraft if you don't have the Brood War expansion (the campaign additions and the changes the expansion made to the core multiplayer game were immense). Your analogy equating StarCraft: Brood War to Microsoft Word and getting the whole, expensive Office Suite is lame and makes very little sense to me (StarCraft without Brood War would be more like settling for Windows 95's "Wordpad" and not even getting MS Word [or an equivalent] in the first place!).
At any rate, Brood War was released in the fall of 1998 so the combined product of that battle chest has been supported by Blizzard for over ten years now. If you think it's "moot" to say that Blizzard's product support doesn't outweigh Microsoft's product support, well . . . I guess you're allowed to think that, but it sounds silly to me. :)
I own StarCraft. I've played it. You don't need Brood War to play StarCraft. I haven't played Brood War because I don't have it and really didn't care to continue it. StarCraft is StarCraft whether you have Brood War or not. Having StarCraft without Brood War would be like having Jedi Knight without Mysteries of the Sith. You've still got Jedi Knight, you just don't have the rest of the story contained in the expansion.
StarCraft is likely only sold in the Battlechest and the Anthology simply because it's not economical for them to sell it standalone. Just like any other game that has expansions (Half-Life and Star Wars Battlegrounds come to mind), they end up selling the whole thing as a set after they've been out for a while. Of course, Half-Life can still be purchased standalone simply because everything Valve does is through Steam, but that's another story.
I really don't care if Blizzard's product support does go for longer than Microsoft's. Blizzard can easily use the revenue from WoW to subsidize any calls they might get for StarCraft (which are probably few and far between). When I think of support, I think of patches, a knowledgebase, and telephone support. Microsoft is still providing all three for XP. I don't think of a retail sale as "support".